Page 24 of Gilded Fake

I swallow the trembling, wobbly, liquid feeling in my throat. I open my mouth to apologize, to try to make it right, but there’s no making this right. No words come. I can’t speak.

“You kept it from me long enough,” he says, his eyes growing fiercer with every passing moment. “I want the truth—all of it. So start talking.”

five

2 YEARS AGO

Colt Darling

“We treat you like shit, and you had a chance to take it out on me,” Gloria pointed out. “Why didn’t you?”

“I told you I’d stop any time you wanted,” I reminded her. “I wanted to fuck you, not hurt you.”

“I just thought you’d be… More brutal.”

“That’s an odd word to describe sex,” I said, frowning down at her.

Her nail circled my bellybutton, gently scratching the hairs that grew there. “I mean… I’m friends with Royal. I’m not his girlfriend. I don’t get protection from his brothers. He’s not possessive of me.”

“And… That’s a word you’d use to describe them?”

She shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “I mean, the twins get bored easy, so they don’t call me much anymore. Once in a while they’ll punish me if I do something wrong, and that’s pretty… Intense. You know how Baron is. But otherwise, I don’t have much experience, so… Today was just not what I was expecting, that’s all.”

“You’re surprised I didn’t rape you?”

“Well, I agreed so… It wouldn’t have been that.”

It was hard not to judge someone for staying after being treated that way the first time, but I didn’t know shit about her or her life. I just knew she’d endured the Dolces for over a year now.

“That’s how you justify what they do to you?” I asked. “Because you agree to it?”

“I mean, they’d do it either way,” she said. “I might as well agree to it and ask something in return. I’m not a victim, Colt. I’m a victor. I can’t change the framework, but I can operate within it to survive, and if I’m smart and resilient enough, maybe thrive. So that’s what I’ve done.”

“I guess if you’re getting something out of it…” I said doubtfully.

“You do the same thing,” she said. “We all work with whatever commodities we’re given. If you’re clever enough to convince them what you have is worth something, you get to stay.”

“True,” I said, thinking of the Slaughterpen. I knew everyone in town and had a few connections from the boxing gym my uncle owned, so when Royal started looking for an underground fight scene, I created one. His family might have bought the warehouse that housed the fights, but I had the contacts to fill it.

“We should probably get up,” Gloria said, obviously done with that conversation. She shifted, her blonde hair falling over her perfect tits, and smiled at me in a way that had my cock stirring again.

“It’s still Bye Week,” I reminded her, reaching up to thumb one of her spectacular nipples. “We have the rest of today.”

“If we’re going to do this all day, we’re going to need sustenance,” Gloria said, tapping her nail on the metal ring on my pubic bone. “I could run home and get something. I’d just have to be careful sneaking in and out.”

It was the first time I’d ever wanted Bye Week to last, and even as I said it, reality—and guilt—set in. Normally I didn’t give two shits about any of it except the street race, which brought me a decent chunk of cash, and even better, leverage, power, and respect. The only reason I was even awake right now was that Dixie had wanted to stay after the race, and I couldn’t deny her. For 363 days a year, our relationship was an open secret, but it was one that existed in the shadows—the opposite of the spotlight she craved.

So on this one weekend, when I was allowed to mingle with kings, the least I could do was indulge her desires to be in the middle of everything, even a game of hide and seek. That was why I’d played the game, so she could show off that she had a boyfriend. For one weekend, she didn’t have to hide me, and I didn’t have to fuck her like a dirty little secret.

I sure as fuck didn’t mean for it to end with me in bed with someone else.

I lifted to draw out of Gloria at last, then rolled onto my back and threw an arm over my eyes. Dixie would never suspect a thing. She’d think I’d gotten disgusted with the Bye Week charade and left her there like an asshole. I’d done way shittier things than that, and she had lots of friends who could give her a ride home.

And hell, I couldn’t have predicted this, either. If someone had told me I’d end up balls deep in the demon queen of Willow Heights, I would have bet my left testicle against it. I’d go home after this, and it would be like nothing happened. Gloria would go back to chasing Royal, back to being a bitch. I’d go back to the monotony of Dixie, who would never guess what happened because I didn’t make it a habit of defying the Dolces. No one would ever know.

But I’d know.

I was shit, and I knew I was shit because I didn’t feel this way about Dixie, and I never had. I loved her, but our connection had never been explosive like this. Even in the beginning, when I threw her a pity fuck because she put up with being called our dog, I didn’t pick her. I wanted to fuck Crystal, but Devlin got her. Dixie was the consolation prize. The next year, the Dolces let me have her, and I was a selfish prick, so I took her. And then she just… Stuck.

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